User talk:Ekias

As my first editing effort, I would like to address the article on Marie-Josèphe Angélique. It suffers, I believe, from English-language bias and lack of competing sources, as it appears to be based solely on Afua Cooper's book. There is a very different French-language analysis of the trial of Angélique published two years before Cooper's book that should, I believe, be taken into consideration in writing a consensual report on the life of this black slave executed for allegedly setting fire to Montreal in 1734. Also, a recent critical review looking at Cooper's book, Beaugrand-Champagne's book and the website "The Torture and the Truth" at canadianmysteries.ca has come out in the well-established French-language scholarly journal specializing in the history of the French in America. The Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique françaiseis a well-established scholarly journal that applies peer evaluation to such reviews. The author of the article "L'incendie de Montréal en 1734 et le procès de Marie-Josèphe Angélique : Trois oeuvres, deux interprétations" (The Montreal Fire in 1734 and the trial of Marie-Josèphe Angélique : three works, two interpretations" my translation)is Evelyn Kolish, a historian specialized in the legal history of Quebec/Lower Canada, with publications in both English and French in various journals such as the Canadian Historical Review, the McGill Law Journal, la Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, Histoire sociale. As a little searching on the web shows, she appears to now be an archivist, specialized in court records, working at the very archives centre that holds the original manuscript transcript of Angélique's trial. (See the portal for Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (www.banq.qc.ca)for a pdf version of her guide to court records at the Quebec national archives .) Dr. Kolish does not seem to have a very high opinion of Cooper as a historian, calling her book on Angélique "un texte qui se situe à mi-chemin entre le roman historique et l'essai journalistique anti-esclavagiste" (a text situated half-way between a historical novel and a journalistic anti-slavery essay--my translation) (p. 89). Kolish suggests that Cooper's methodology leaves a lot to be desired: Cooper's appears to have made a very cursory and partial use of existing secondary sources on New France in the early 18th century, basing her book primarily on older, English-language works of the survey level, neglecting almost entirely the very considerable historiography in French, including some classics that any serious historian would have consulted.  Kolish goes on to point out various errors (some so basic it is hard to believe a consciencious historian could have made them--like confusing the Criminal Ordonnance of 1670 with the Coutume de Paris (p. 90) and even feels that Cooper traffics the evidence, leaving out passages from the trial transcripts that don't suit her hypothesis, inventing information such as Thibault (Angélique's lover)supposedly being a soldier (p. 90), or even altering testimony (saying for example that Anglélique's owner accused her of setting the fire, when the transcript shows that she actually denied the possibility (p.91). Moreover, Kolish points out that Cooper doesn't even cite the primary sources correctly, as well as very rarely providing specific references to the very lengthy trial transcripts (not very verifiable!!). Thus it seems less than desirable to write an article for Wikipedia based solely on a single secondary work that has been seriously criticized for unreliable methodology. I would like to moderate the existing article by balancing the condensation of Cooper's work with ideas taken from Beaugrand-Champagne and from other French-language sources (dealing with the legal system, for example). In cases of conflict between the two authors, a third source is the "Torture and the truth" website which provides typescripted translations of the entire trial transcripts. Although this is a primary source it does not require interpretation to check out someone's testimony there--anyone who can read can see for themselves. I would add, that although en.Wikipedia prefers English-language sources, there are areas of knowledge, such as national histories, where not only most primary sources but also most secondary sources are in the language of the nation and not in English. In fact, unilingual readers are at the mercy of the English-language sources and have no way of verifying their accuracy, when most of the sources are in another language. In these cases, an informed consensus can hardly be reached using only English-language sources. The story of Marie-Josèphe Angélique is one such case.

Good work
Nice to see someone knowledgeable of the sources clean up the mess of a article Marie-Josèphe Angélique was. Il ne reste plus qu'à faire la traduction française. :-) -- Mathieugp (talk) 03:24, 1 February 2009 (UTC)